
Larissa FastHorse
Santa Monica, CA
Larissa FastHorse is a Sicangu Lakota playwright, director, and choreographer whose work radically engages Indigenous collaborators to explore onstage representations of the joys and challenges that the Native community faces. Her latest comedy, The Thanksgiving Play, is a hilarious and poignant play that touches upon weighty issues such as privilege, representation and appropriation, but never loses its sense of humor.
FastHorse’s past plays include What Would Crazy Horse Do?, Urban Rez, Landless and Cow Pie Bingo, Average Family, Teaching Disco Square Dancing to Our Elders: a Class Presentation, Vanishing Point and Cherokee Family Reunion. She also directed the critically acclaimed play, Our Voices Will Be Heard at the Perseverance Theater Company, and is developing projects with an emphasis on rigorous Indigenous community engagement. FastHorse won the PEN USA Literary Award for Drama, NEA Distinguished New Play Grant, Joe Dowling Annamaghkerrig Fellowship, AATE Distinguished Play Award, Sundance/Ford Foundation Fellowship, Aurand Harris Fellowship, the UCLA Native American Woman of the Year and the Ford, Mellon and NEA Grants. She is a proud officer of the Board of Directors for Theatre Communications Group and represented by Jonathan Mills, Paradigm NY.
Events
- Larissa FastHorse: Fake It Until You Make It January 29, 2025
- Wicoun: A new play with and about the Oceti Sakowin May 25–June 16, 2023
- The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse and directed by Rachel Chavkin May 2, 2023

Urban Rez by Larissa FastHorse
Urban Rez by Larissa FastHorse. Photo credit: Kevin Michael Campbell
Urban Rez by Larissa FastHorse. Photo credit: Kevin Michael Campbell
Urban Rez by Larissa FastHorse. Photo credit: Kevin Michael Campbell
FNX Now interviews Larissa FastHorse about Urban Rez
Native Nation
Larissa FastHorse is a Sicangu Lakota playwright, director, and choreographer whose work radically engages Indigenous collaborators to explore onstage representations of the joys and challenges that the Native community faces.
Artist BioNative Nation is a community-generated and -performed immersive theatrical experience created through radical engagement with the Lakota communities of South Dakota. Native Nation combines long term community service with the Cornerstone methodology of creating theater through a Native lens to make work that is truly Indigenous and artistically excellent.